


The Wheat's Voice

by windsroad



Category: The Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 05:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11960991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windsroad/pseuds/windsroad
Summary: When Al was young, he heard the wheat talk.Spoilers for the end of Drowned Ammet and The Crown of Dalemark. A fic about everyone's favorite Dalemark character. /sarcasm





	The Wheat's Voice

One day when Al was young, running from one chore on the farm to another, he heard the wheat speak to him.

“Alhammitt,” called the wheat. “Little princeling.”

Al turned sharply. The wheat rustled in the Flate’s breeze and sometimes could be mistaken for the chatter of voices. But this was clear. “What did you say?” he asked. “What do you mean, princeling?”

“I ask you to think about it.”

At that, Al dropped what he was doing and ran to find his father. “The wheat talks,” he said. “It said things. It knew my name and called me prince.”

His father boxed his ears. “If you’re prince, I’m king,” he said. “Do what I say and get back to work.”

Al’s head rung. He rubbed his ears and ran off to his chores.

 

After that, Al heard the wheat speak to him often. It called his full name softly, more kindly than anyone had since his mother died. When Al asked why, if he was a princeling like it said, he had to shovel the bull’s muck and work in the fields, it asked in return whether anything was wrong with farm work.

Al thought if he was prince, he might be entitled to a bit more, but he didn’t say so—he was talking to the wheat itself, after all.

Each time Al told his father about the wheat, his father hit him over the head again and told him to get back to work.

“Wheat,” Al asked, between tears, “if I am prince, why does my father treat me so bad?”

The wheat took a long time answering. “It is not right for him to do so,” it said finally. Little help that did.

 

One night, maybe too late in the evening for it to be smart that Al bothered his father, he mentioned the wheat once again.

His father got angry. Very, very angry. He beat Al soundly and said that if the heard about this childish nonsense again, Al would no longer be around to hear the wheat talk at all.

Al was sore in the morning, and would have preferred to sleep, but that would have gotten him beaten again.

The wheat tried to call to him in the afternoon. “Alhammitt,” the voice said softly.

Al got angry, too. He yelled at the kind voice. “What good do you do me?” he screamed, crying. “All you do is call me prince, prince, and it doesn’t help me at all! I never want to hear you again!”

And he didn’t. In response he got a long, desolate silence, with only the regular chatter of the breeze to listen to. Many years passed before he heard, or even thought of, the wheat’s voice again.

 

Al grew up to be a thickset, powerful man, someone people could push around no longer. He left his father and made a happy life for himself. His wife Milda was pretty and kind, if a little useless with money and used to finer things. They were able to keep a small farm on the Flate even under Earl Hadd, and they were satisfied.

The day his son was born, Milda laughed and said she would name their child after him, another Alhammitt.

“Then he’ll be common as dirt,” said Al. “Just like me. You go into town and shout ‘Alhammitt’ in the street, and half Holand will come to you.”

Al had a flash of a memory, of a field of wheat and a soft voice calling him Alhammitt lovingly. Milda always called him Al, never Alhammitt. Al shook the memory away. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

 

And Al did not think of the voice for many years again. Just then, everything in his life seemed to be going wrong. The rent collector had raised the rent after his stupid son had not stopped that bull, and they had to keep selling, selling, selling things to pay the bills, but his wife still insisted on spending money on useless things.

Al was sick of them. He had to go to Holand to find work, and while he was away from the wheat and the breeze, he was glad to be away from them.

It was his first Holand Sea Festival that he heard the voice again.

He stood by the side of the road, watching the precession and drinking a little too much. Earl Hadd and his son Harl approached with Old Ammet and Libby Beer, and Al spat at the ground.

As Earl Hadd and the wheat figure of Old Ammet passed, Al heard a familiar voice. _Alhammitt_ , it called.

Al was jolted out of his thoughts. He did not like to be reminded of that voice and all he thought it had promised him. It made him angry once again.

His father had passed—and if Al had been a prince once, that made him a king now. And weren’t kings entitled to certain things? To not be stuck under the thumb of earls and their sons? Didn’t he deserve more?

Al went out and found himself another wife. This one was pretty as well, but practical and appreciated the things he did. He approached the earl and his sons and offered them his services—he would join revolutionary groups and tip the earl’s men off to their movements, for a hefty payment. He became the best shot in all of Holand, able to take out anyone from as far as the newest model guns allowed him. He played the earl and his sons against each other. And Al made a new home for himself away from Holand, still sending money back to Milda to keep her off his back.

When they did show up in Holand, constantly spending too much money and getting in the way, Al arranged to collapse the Free Holanders and slip away from Holand and off to the better life he deserved. He lived with his new wife and new family, taking trips to the Holy Islands where he found they would fawn over him simply for being named Alhammitt.

Al was entitled to the best, and he vowed to take from life whatever it didn’t give him.


End file.
